“I close my eyes a curtain falls” explains the narrator in How it is, thus suggesting that we should reflect upon the scenography at work, whether in the theatrical texts or in the prose works. The point will be to explore the issues at stake in the term écarquiller – to open one’s eyes wide – a word heavily invested in by the author in the francophone version of his works. We will try to understand the verb as the key to a poetics keen to represent and visualise the act of looking as creative.